At the Mercy of Informal Learning: Education and Development in Stateless Somalia

Abstract

With the collapse of the state in the beginning of 1991, Somalia has been a country without any coherent and nationally viable economic, social, or educational structures. Since then, the country has disintegrated into mini fiefdoms that are controlled by different factions with their own militia which are loyal to the warlords who, via their clan affiliations, control a cluster of politically non-cohesive regions. These factions have not been able or willing to formulate any reconstruction and re-development programs, including education, that could have “resuscitated” the country’s socioeconomic infrastructure, completely destroyed as it was by the factional fighting in late 1990 and early 1991. It was upon reflecting on this sad situation that the Somali novelist and literary critic Afrax (2002) described the case as a highly disturbing scenario where both the individual and communal minds of the nation are in a coma, and where the collective conscience of the people is no longer viable.